When I say that this book confirmed me in my belief that Wicca is a bona fide religion, I do not mean that as a compliment. This book served its purpose of giving me some insight into the gears and knobs that make it work for some people, but throughout I found the very same pedantry and dilution that makes other religions so unpalatable to me personally.
To be fair, this was exactly Buckland's stated purpose in writing this book. He is an advocate for mainstream acceptance of Wicca, and goes out of his way to draw attention to the harmlessness and relative banality of the practice. In doing so, however, he reveals that Wicca is well on its way to falling into the trap that has befallen every religion before it, that which William James so insightfully identifies as the transition away from authentic religious experience into systematized bureaucracy.
Mercifully, there is one trap into which it has not yet fallen, although based on Buckland's descriptions and warnings, it is not far off. The most deadly trap of religion, the litmus test by which I gauge whether a given thinker, community, or doctrine is worth considering, is to think that one is right. The divine is not a puzzle that has been solved, and to think otherwise is delusion and laziness. At the point of Buckland's writing, at least, Wicca was still able to claim "and it harm none, do what thou wilt."
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